Rebecca with two of the distance students, Portia and Michael
Published January 28, 2015, last updated on October 5, 2017 under Voices of DGHI
Rebecca Swensen
Bass Connections
We made it to Tamale! After a long night/day of travel Dr. Morgan and I met up with Dr. Kayla Bryan and Christopher Phillips at the airport in Accra, Ghana yesterday then took a flight up north to Tamale, Ghana. During our time in Tamale, we are staying at the University of Development Studies Conference Center. The UDS students studying various medical professions attend classes next to the Tamale Teaching Hospital, which is about 15 minutes drive from the conference center.
Today was our first day meeting and working with the distance students at the University of Development Studies in Tamale, Ghana. These students are practicing Nurse Anesthetists and are obtaining their BSC. Dr. Morgan started the day off by discussing some issues that have been experienced on the portal and that the process has been started for building an application for use on the student’s tablets. Other exciting updates include additional funding that is available bring a health informatics student on every trip from now on to assist with all technical and tablet issues that are experienced. Also, there is now funding in order to bring two faculty members and two students to the US for Duke Global Health Showcase week in October 2015! Everyone seemed pretty excited about this announcement in particular!
We then began the learning portion of the day as well as data collection. Dr. Morgan and I presented a lecture on anesthesia management in trauma and neuro trauma. There were several opportunities for students to break in to small groups and discuss trauma and neuro trauma cases they have experienced in their hospitals. They developed excellent discussions in regards to anesthetic management in terms of what was done right and what they may change next time they are presented with the situation. These students embrace the fact that they are leaders in their hospitals and communities.
I learned so much from listening and participating in the student’s conversations. They educated me on the hierarchy of care in Ghana; there are clinics, regional hospitals, referral hospitals, and teaching hospitals. The Ghanaian health system is seen as a model for care in Africa. However, they are met with obstacles on a daily basis. If they even have a ventilator in their hospital, there is no guarantee that it will work when you need. A group of students spoke of the patients they frequently see that suffer from snakebites, in a particular a snake with paralyzing venom. Because they did not have a ventilator, nor enough anti-venom, after the patient was emergently intubated the nurse anesthetist had to manually ventilate the patient the entire night until they recovered. Throughout the weekend their stories continued to inspire me as well as provide a great deal of knowledge for myself and others.
After an eventful day, Dr. Morgan took us to the Luxury Restaurant, which is owned by Dr. Robert, the Dean of the School of Nursing at UDS. We were introduced to TZ, a spicy Ghanaian dish that is eaten with your hands. The pizza was also highly recommended and although it is not a traditional Ghanaian entrée… it was also excellent!
